


Celeste

by rotai



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Childhood, F/M, Family Dynamics, Female James T. Kirk, Friendship, Gen, Heavy Angst, Humor, M/M, Siblings, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Tarsus IV
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-23
Updated: 2018-05-23
Packaged: 2019-05-13 02:46:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14740586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rotai/pseuds/rotai
Summary: The story of Jamie Kirk:Riverside, Iowa, with a drunken abusive Frank and absent mother and star strewn skies and dusty ground and golden fields and Sam, who raises her in his unsteady passionate way.Tarsus, which is a dream come true, until it's not.And then Celeste. Celeste is a planet for the lost. Jamie crash lands there at seventeen, alone and penniless. Somehow she strikes up a friendship with some of the students there. Her walls are lowered just enough for Bones to pry his way in, and slowly, slowly, she learns to fall in love.





	Celeste

**Author's Note:**

> I'm lying on the moon  
> My dear, I'll be there soon  
> It's a quiet and starry place  
> Time's we're swallowed up  
> In space we're here a million miles away  
> -The Moon Song

Jamie Kirk is seven and sitting on the edge of the roof.

Her bare legs are dangling off the edge of it, feet dipped into the whistling breeze. The sky is enormous and gaping, a riotous rapturous expanse of strewn diamonds. Strains of shouting drift up from the open window below, but Jamie plugs her ears and stares resolutely at the sky. If she can’t hear it, the argument doesn’t exist.

None of it exists, in fact, apart from the moon rounded and opaque in the centre of the sky, dissolving around the edges, battered and starstruck. And the hazy silhouettes of spacecraft waltzing their way across the galaxy, maybe with girls with their faces pressed against the glass, staring down at the lonely expanse that is Riverside, Iowa, and maybe seeing Jamie, head tilted back on top of the farmhouse roof, in a stained red dress with skinned knees and pigtails, and they’re watching her, so Jamie raises a hand and waves at them tentatively…

“No one can see you from that far, idiot,” Sam scoffs, clambering out the window behind her and sliding down the tiles.

“They could if they had a telescope,” she argues, snatching her hand down and glaring at him.

“They don’t have telescopes,” he tells her. His voice is hoarse from shouting. He is sitting with his face angled away from her, so Jamie leans forwards to get a better look at him. His left eye is swollen shut, and his cheek is split open, dripping slowly down to his chin.

“I thought you said he was going to stop hitting you,” Jamie says in a whisper, reaching out to touch him. Sam careens away and frowns at her, turning his face away again.

“He is going to stop. He was just drunk. It’s none of your business, anyway,” he tells her defensively. He sees something in the set of her chin and says, “If you dare tell a teacher…”

Jamie flushes. “I’m not a snitch.”

“You better not be,” he says threateningly, then deflates, and sighs, and pulls out a slightly mangled cupcake from his back pocket. “Here you go. Birthday present.”

Jamie takes it out of his hand and smiles. “Can you sing happy birthday?”

Sam rolls his eyes but gives a convincing rendition of Happy Birthday. Jamie sneaks a look back up at the sky and the lazy dotted starships, and thinks about the people watching her with her birthday cake on the farmhouse roof, and wonders if they guess it’s her birthday, and wonders if they’re singing along too, even though they know she can’t hear them. She closes her eyes and blows out an imaginary candle and makes a wish.

Sam finishes the song and says gruffly, “You can’t make a wish if you didn’t blow out a real candle.”

“I can, too,” Jamie says, peeling off the wrapper and eating the cake delicately.

“What did you wish for?”

“I can’t tell you, or it won’t come true!” she says, scandalised, because Sam really should know better, and he sighs and rolls his eyes at her and leans back and kicks his feet out over the edge.

“How was school?” he asks eventually.

She frowns at her knees. They’re stinging and grazed from where Paul pushed her over, because she punched him in the nose, because he asked her if she remembered Kelvin exploding.

“Did you fight, again?” Sam scowls.

“No,” she protests.

“Did you go to the assembly?”

“Yes,” she lies, but she didn’t go to the stupid assembly. She hid in the stockroom as everyone else went to the assembly, and everyone else sat in rows with suitably sombre faces and watched the destruction of the starship and George Kirk’s death in HD resolution, and whispered to each other when the speckled gleaming pod containing Jamie Kirk dropped down from the underside of the explosion and floated down to Earth.  

“You didn’t go, I know you didn’t. Did you get in trouble?”

“No,” which is another lie, because Mrs McClelland had found her in the stockroom, and dragged her out by the elbow while Jamie kicked and spat like a wild animal, and then gave her a lecture that was achingly familiar; involving all three components of, You should have more respect for your father, I know it’s hard with your mother gone, and I’m here if you ever need to talk.

“For god’s sake, Jamie. They’re not gonna phone home, are they? Because you know how angry that will make Frank.”

“I don’t care if he’s angry,” Jamie scowls.

“You might not care, but you’re not the one who has to deal with it.”

Sam regrets it as soon as he says it, and they fester together in uncomfortable, guilty silence.

“Sam,” Jamie says eventually, looking at the sky again.

He grunts in response.

“Do you think Dad’s up there? Watching us?”

“Yeah, he is,” Sam says confidently. “I told you, didn’t I? He’s always watching us.”

“But I can’t see him,” Jamie says, frowning into the darkness, looking at the space between the stars where the Kelvin exploded, where George is supposed to be, still floating there and staring down.

“He’s too far away.”

“Then how can he see me?”

“He has special powers.”

“Okay,” Jamie says, accepting that. Sam moves over to her and puts an arm round her shoulders.

“He’s saying happy birthday to you right now. I can hear him,” Sam tells her confidently.

“When will I hear him?”

“When you’re older,” Sam promises.

“Is Mom watching us too?” Jamie asks plaintively.

“Mom isn’t dead, she’s just in a spaceship. She’s probably doing paperwork right now.”

“She didn’t call to say happy birthday to me.”

“Yeah, I know,” Sam sighs. Winowa doesn’t care about anything but Starfleet and a dead George Kirk, and they both know that she hasn’t even remembered that it’s her daughter’s birthday, and instead she will have spent today in mourning. They haven’t seen her in a year and sometimes it feels like they’ll never see her again. She’s as far away as George. “It’s late, and we have school tomorrow,” Sam says. “Come on. Time for bed.”

He helps her through the window back into the attic and they climb carefully down the ladder and onto the landing. Frank is watching TV downstairs. They sneak into their room. Sam tucks Jamie into bed and flicks her on the forehead, and she falls backwards into sleep.  

**00**

Winona does finally come home, about three months later. She arrives in the middle of the night, appearing at the gate as a lopsided silhouette laden with bags. Jamie and Sam watch through the upstairs window as she hauls all the rest of her bags out of Christopher Pike’s car and then straightens up. She waves a stilted goodbye as the car reverses and drives off. They all watch as it disappears around a bend. Winowa turns back to the house, and they see her face all frozen up and carved from marble, held rigidly in a tight lipped mask as she starts making her way down the path. As she gets closer to the farmhouse, her face drops, collapsing around the edges and at the centre and folding into sadness. She tilts her head back and looks at the stars and they know that she wishes she never came home.

Frank comes out to greet her and takes her bags, hefting them onto one shoulder. He leads her into the house. Winona asks, muted, “How have the kids been?”

“Obstinate brats,” Frank says back coldly.

Winona shuts the door; there is a faint clang, and a key sliding into the lock, and the rattle of the chain pulled across. “I don’t doubt it,” she says softly.

Jamie looks sideways at Sam, who is wearing a black eye and a necklace of purple finger marks. He rolls his eyes back at her, the whites of them gleaming in the dark. “Ignore them,” he whispers to her. “All adults are dumb, especially parents. When I’m eighteen we’ll run away to New York and we’ll never see them again.”

“But then you’ll be an adult, so you’ll be just as dumb,” Jamie whispers back.

“I’ll be the exception,” he tells her crossly.

“Will I be an exception too?”

“If you listen to  _everything_ I say.”

Jamie wants to question that but then Winona starts up the stairs; they pad back into bed and stuff their faces into pillows, breathing loudly and slowly, splaying their limbs in an imitation of sleep. She opens the door and looks in on them for one long moment before retreating to her room. Sam and Jamie scramble out of bed again and press their ears to the wall.

Frank says, muffled, “How long are you staying for this time?”

“A week,” Winona says dully.

“A week? I thought it was a month!” Frank exclaims.

“I’ve been assigned to a different ship. It leaves early,” Winowa tells him, still without inflection.

“And what am I supposed to do, huh?” Frank is shouting now, rage flowing out of him as it always does, quick and easy. Jamie flinches away from the noise and grips onto Sam’s sleeve.

“What are you supposed to do?” Winowa shouts back, finally getting angry. “What the fuck does that mean? You’ve got land and a free house and a job I got you and what the fuck are  _you_ supposed to do?”

“Yeah, and I’ve got your goddamn kids!”

Sam whispers _your goddamn kids!_ and pulls an exaggerated face at Jamie. She giggles, too loud, and Sam clamps a hand over her mouth, which only makes her giggle harder. He picks her up and drops her on her bed and covers her in duvets and blankets and pillows before uncovering her face slightly and whispering, “Have you stopped laughing yet?”

“No!” she giggles at him. He rolls her eyes and piles more pillows on top of her head and she laughs into her mattress, and forgets about Winona and Frank, whose argument spirals down into a stream of snide bitter insults directed at each other and sparking off each other and ricocheting round the room and clattering down at the feet, going on and on and on through the whole night.

**00**

Winona being home means Frank doesn’t drink for that one solitary week. This means Sam doesn’t get hit. But that’s only small consolation to Jamie, who has to creep around her own house for fear of encountering her mother, who grabs her elbow when she finally sees her and wheels her round and looks her up and down disparagingly; “Jamie Kirk, you’re absolutely filthy.”

“I was playing outside,” Jamie says sulkily, pushing her lower lip out, which usually makes adults soften. Winona doesn’t even blink.

“Barefoot?”

“Yeah! Cavemen never wore shoes!”

“You’re not a caveman,” Winona says sternly. She’s still clutching Jamie’s elbow. Jamie wrenches her arm away and runs for the living room. Sam is lying upside down on the couch, playing a videogame. She thumps down next to him as Winowa follows her in, saying, “Jamie, come and wash yourself,  _now._ ”

 

Jamie nudges Sam to do something. He looks up from his videogame and sighs. “What’s wrong, Mom? She’s just going to go and get dirty again, what’s the point of getting clean?”

“She doesn’t have to go outside again!”

“Why not? We haven’t got school. What else do you want her to do?”

“My own children don’t respect me!” Winona says, throwing her hands up and striding out the room.

Jamie grins toothily. Sam turns his frown on her. “Stop doing that.”

“What?” Jamie shrugs, ducking his swipe, and runs outside to find her friends. She knows exactly what Sam’s talking about, because every time Winona catches her and tells her off for something, Jamie runs to Sam and Sam makes it stop. Jamie decides firmly that she doesn’t like her mother, and looks up at the sky and wishes it had been her dad who survived and who was down here now, and he’d never ever leave and he wouldn’t even dream of telling her off for dusty feet.

**00**

Jamie’s best friend is a boy her age called Kian. His older brother, Michael, is Sam’s best friend, and the four used to spend all their time together before Michael and Sam got to double digits and decided they were too cool to hang out with younger siblings, but Kian and Jamie have more fun together anyway. They live three houses away from each other and see each other nearly every day.

A week after Winowa came home, Kian and Michael are round. Micheal and Sam are playing soccer in the garden. Kian and Jamie are constructing a house of cards. Kian keeps looking at it up close and breathing too hard, so all the cards fall over.

They hear a car pull up at the front of the house and Jamie pulls Kian over to the window. “Look, that’s a Starfleet captain.”

“No, it’s not,” Kian denies, being used to Jamie’s extravagant lies.

“It is! That’s Christopher Pike and he’s the captain of the biggest ship in Starfleet. And now he’s taking my mom away again for a whole year and they’re going to go to a different galaxy and teach Universal to green aliens who don’t even know how to talk yet, they just wail at each other and use their fingers for language.”

“You’re lying,” Kian sings, looking down out the window at Winona walking out the house, lopsided with the same bags as she bought in a week ago, her posture expectant, her step excited. “Aren’t you gonna say goodbye to your mom?”

“No, she doesn’t want me to,” Jamie says, crossing her arms.

“Why not?”

“She doesn’t like me.”

“No one likes you,” Kian says.

“ _You_ like me,” Jamie tells him.

“I like you as much as I like Michael’s pet snail.”

“You hate his snail,” Jamie says, frowning.

“Exactly! Idiot!”

“You’re an idiot!” Jamie says, anger rising up inside of her, jumping on him and trying to get him in a headlock. Kian twists over and trips her onto the floor, and they wrestle each other furiously. Michael walks into the room and shouts, “Sam, they’re fighting again!” and Sam walks in and says, bored, “Jamie, get off him,” and Jamie ignores him and keeps wrestling with Kian, and Michael and Sam laugh at them for a little while before they leave again, and Jamie twists Kian’s arms behind him until he taps out, but in the chaos the house of cards was knocked over, so wearily but determinedly they sit down and start to build it back up again.

And just like that, Winowa is gone again. They don’t see her for another few years. At this point, no one really minds.

**00**

Monday morning rolls round like it does every week, always painfully early and thick with dew and too bright. Jamie rubs at her eyes and sits up, Sam’s alarm blaring two feet away. He sleeps soundly, on his back, mouth open.

“Sam!” she shouts, like she shouts every morning. “Turn your alarm off!”

And just like every morning, he is dead to the world, and she gathers her blankets round her and crawls out of bed to the alarm, and turns it off, and goes back to her bed and hurls herself into it and falls asleep.

Half an hour later Sam wakes up, checks the time, panics and hollers, “Jamie Kirk, wake up!” and she ignores him, so he drags her out of bed by her ankles and out the room, and she clings to the doorway, so he hauls her over his shoulder and stumbles downstairs. Frank is in an unusually good mood and slams plates of scrambled eggs down in front of them. They eat fast and race each other to the bathroom to brush their teeth and Sam plaits her hair messily and throws clothes at her and then they run all the way down the street. Kian and Michael are waiting outside their gate, kicking a ball to each other, and look up when Sam and Jamie come tearing down, and say, “We’re going to be late,” and then they all try fast walking to school, but mostly it devolves into mini soccer games and pushing each other into the road.

Kian and Jamie are in the same class and sneak into the back of the classroom. Melanie, who is Jamie’s other long time best friend, turns a freckled nose up at them and whispers, “You’re late.”

“Jamie’s fault,” Kian says automatically.

“Sam’s fault,” Jamie replies.

They’re doing maths, but it’s maths that Sam taught to her ages ago so Jamie sits and swings her legs and tries not to look too bored. She looks out the window at the blue wide sky and wonders what it would taste like, if she could climb up to it and lick a stripe across it. She thinks it would be deliciously sour, like the bright blue lollies you got from the corner shop which were so tangy it made your head spin.

At lunch, they’re let out into the field in the back of the school. It’s just been mowed and is covered with mounds of dead browning grass. They kick them into knee high heaps then run up and jump into the heaps so the grass explodes everywhere and into everyone’s faces and hair and on their clothes so everyone is covered in grass by the end of lunch, and they look like scarecrows, running round and trailing bits of themselves.

They’re bought back to class but next is art, and Jamie paints a picture of her and Sam, and they’re standing against the New York skyline and holding hands, and Frank and Winona are nowhere to be seen, and the sky is blue and made of lollipops and melts and drips sugar into their eyes.

 


End file.
